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Um Mitternacht

Introduction

Britten’s setting of Goethe’s ‘Um Mitternacht’ (published in 1994) was probably composed in 1959, shortly after the composer’s strong interest in German poetry had borne fruit in his tenor song-cycle Sechs Hölderlin-Fragmente. At this time, Pears was enjoying an enviable reputation as one of the leading exponents of Lieder in the world, repeatedly earning ecstatic reviews in the German press that inspired the BBC to capitalize on this success by carefully promoting his and Britten’s work in Germany.

Recordings

Susan Gritton and Mark Padmore perform these songs with vigour, marvellously accompanied by Iain Burnside and do great justice to songs which many would regard as being the most distinctive and very finest examples of Britten’s art.» More

The multi-award-winning partnership of Gerald Finley and Julius Drake turn to the composer Benjamin Britten for their latest Hyperion release. This disc contains Britten’s two important song cycles for baritone: Tit for Tat, and the more su ...» More

'Bostridge is in the royal line of Britten's tenor interpreters … heard here in a veritable cornucopia of, by and large, unfamiliar, and even unk ...'The advent of Ian Bostridge has been one of the most heartening occurrences in British musical life in recent years. Here is a tenor with a wonderful ...» More

'This is still a voice of youthful freshness, commanded with skill and assurance. The programme tests his musicianship very thoroughly, and it reveals ...'Sung by Mark Padmore who, on this form and in this repertory, seems to me to be unrivalled among younger English tenors … With Roger Vignoles as ...» More

At midnight I would go, hardly willingly, a very small boy, by that graveyard, to father the priest’s house; star upon star, how beautifully they all shine; at midnight.

When later in life I must go to my darling because she draws me, star and Northern light above me in competition, as I go I nourish future happiness; at midnight.

Then finally the gleam of the full moon so bright and distinct pierces my gloom, also the thought, keen, clever, quick, winds itself around the past as around the future; at midnight.

The Hölderlin songs, of course, make up Britten’s only cycle in the German language (which might also be a reason for its neglect). However the publication in 1994 of The Red Cockatoo & other songs revealed a fascinating glimpse of what might have been, in a single setting of Goethe. That Britten marked several other Goethe poems for composition suggests he was planning an entire cycle, but in the event only one song emerged. Written in 1959–60, shortly after the Hölderlin Fragments, Um Mitternacht is a much more radical, even experimental composition, in which the singer seems to walk suspended between heaven and earth. Twelve deep chords sound the twelve strokes of midnight – each to a different note of the chromatic scale, but progressing cyclically from A minor to the related home key of C minor – while the high treble pulsates with ‘Gestirn und Nordschein’ (‘stars and northern lights’). In this case Britten’s musical metaphor has a powerful resonance, not only providing a telling postscript to the Hölderlin cycle, but also touching on many of the themes – of youth, of age, of time – addressed by the other works on this recording.